The Chronicles of Kyle: The Inspiration
by Kathryn Shadow
Summary: Rose had loved that cat. That cat had probably loved Rose....or maybe the Doctor was just going mad.' Another installment in the Chronicles of Kyle, a series of separate Doctor/Rose oneshots, revolving around a cat, which can be read in any order.


Hello! Did you miss me? ...No? Merde. :'(

**Disclaimer: **I own Kyl... OMG I DON'T EVEN OWN KYLE! -sob-

-BAD WOLF-

The Doctor slipped into the TARDIS, closed the door and leant against it, sliding downwards until he sat crumpled on the floor with his head cradled in his hands.

He instinctively started to get up because Rose would kill him if he blocked her way in, but then he remembered and collapsed again. She couldn't kill him, not any more. Bloody Torchwood had taken care of that.

And he had taken care of Torchwood, said part of him darkly.

Tears slid down his face as the Time Lord mourned in silence, the TARDIS sadly dimming her lights as she gathered the needed information from his mind, changing her song into a quiet dirge and letting the Doctor grieve.

"Mrraow?"

His head snapped up, eyes narrowing at the ginger creature, and the anger which had been burning deep inside him since he had figured out that Rose wouldn't get out of Torchwood alive suddenly flared into an inferno. He got up quickly enough to startle even the TARDIS and stalked to the controls, roughly shoving Kyle out of the way.

He was going to take that cat back to the Olympics and drop him off there so that he could be left alone to mourn in peace, and if the feline died he wouldn't bloody care. Kyle was nothing.

He was almost halfway through setting the co-ordinates when the cat in question jumped on the console, miraculously missing all of the controls to stare pleadingly at him, and he paused.

Rose had loved that cat.

That cat had probably loved Rose. He was definitely looking almost piteously confused at him, questioning where the pink-and-yellow human was...

...Or maybe the Doctor was just going mad.

With a sigh, the Time Lord flicked the switch which would delete the co-ordinates he had programmed and reached out to scratch Kyle's ears. The cat purred and leaned into the touch before blinking his massive emerald-green eyes at the Doctor once more, the question still there.

So the Doctor explained what had happened to Rose, feeling very much like one of those crazy cat ladies he had always striven to avoid, but not entirely caring. A vague thought wandered into his head, said that Jackie would have made a brilliant crazy cat lady, and then wandered out again.

"So she's gone now," he finished, sinking onto the seat by the console. "And I can't get her back."

Kyle blinked at him and the Doctor suddenly felt like an idiot. The cat didn't understand, and wouldn't care if he had. Rose, in the cat's eyes, was just the one who took care of him, and could be replaced.

"Took care of both of us," he said with a slight smile. "Dunno what I'm gonna do without her."

The cat bobbed his head in a gesture eerily similar to a nod— although he was probably looking at some glittering piece of the TARDIS on the opposite side of the room— and flicked his tail.

The tail hit a switch.

"This is Emergency Programme One," said the Doctor's voice, startling both the Doctor and the cat as they turned to face the hologram. "Now, you already know what's going on 'cause this has happened to you before, but this time, Rose, there's no going back. You can't open the TARDIS again, it'd rip apart the universe. All of them. And that would be bad. So don't do that. Now, I heard from your mother that you were completely unable to forget me the last time this happened, which is very nice of you, by the way, so I'm not going to ask you to try. Tell you what, pop into the TARDIS every now and then and say hello to her if you like, but _don't_ try to come back. Just... have a brilliant life, like the one you deserve. I tried to give you the most fantastic life I could, but if this message is playing at you, it's fairly apparent that that didn't work out, so it's your turn to try."

The Doctor stood up and moved to face his hologram.

"And..." The hologram paused. "There was an and. What was it?" It frowned at the floor. "Oh! Right! Never got to say this to you in life, probably, but I figure I might as well say it now. No idea how it's going to help, but I'm saying it anyway. I..." He paused and glanced down the corridor for a moment to check that the recipient of the message wasn't watching him before turning back forwards. "Rose Tyler, you are _brilliant_, and I love you forever."

The image gave a lopsided grin before it flickered into nothingness.

"Brilliant," murmured the Doctor. "Kyle, you are _amazing!_" He whirled around, picked him up and kissed him between the ears, much to the cat's irritation.

So he couldn't go back for Rose; there wasn't a crack large enough for that. But he could at least talk to her one last time to say good-bye, to tell her everything he had never let himself say.

She deserved that much, at least.

-BAD WOLF-

And there we are with the end of another chapter! :D I have several of the Chronicles written out already, and EACH WILL BE A DIFFERENT STORY so that those who don't want to read the whole series can just read little bits out of order and it won't take from the series at all.

Or maybe I've just been on Teaspoon for too long.

Oh, whatever.

Happy Easter and an auspicious Otherstide to you.


End file.
